Let's Build a Tesla Museum

We don't have a Tesla museum. We don't have a Tesla museum! I know, WTF, right?

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We don't have a Tesla museum. We don't have a Tesla museum! I know, WTF, right? We have Thomas Edison museums up the wazoo, and Tesla was way more awesome than Edison was. Matt Inman over at The Oatmeal is just as outraged as I suddenly am, and he's trying to raise enough money to buy Tesla's old lab and museumify it.

Tesla did a lot of his late work at a place called Wardenclyffe, located in Long Island, NY. Back when he was messing around out there, the Wardenclyffe hosted a laboratory, a bigass electrical generator and a huge crazy-looking tower that was supposed to transmit data (and eventually wireless power) straight through the Earth.

The tower is gone (probably dismantled and sent to the same place they keep the Roswell aliens, the Ark of the Covenant and those dancing hamsters from the Scion commercials), but the lab is still there, as is the foundation of the tower. You'd think that the whole place would have been designated as a National Historical Site approximately forever ago, but it never happened. Why? Because we suck, I guess. What other explanation could there be? Tesla deserves better!

But now's our chance to undo some of that suck: Wardenclyffe is up for sale, and if we work together, we can buy it for just $1.7 million. Matt Inman (noted fan of Tesla) has put together an Indiegogo campaign to raise enough money to buy it and turn it over to the non-profit Tesla Science Center, which will eventually build an actual Tesla Science Center on the site. New York State, in an uncharacteristic show of generosity, is willing to kick in up to $850,000 to match whatever comes out of Indegogo, meaning that we have a real shot at making this work.

The Indegogo fundraiser does come with a few perks, but nothing cooler than the fact that you helped build a Tesla museum. Get in on the action at the link below, and don't miss Inman's Oatmealesque promo page, as well as an interview with the artist with Forbes writer Greg Voakes about the Tesla museum campaign.